


Prayer For Peace

by Thimblerig



Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [11]
Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Tag, Episode: s01e08 Broken Pieces, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23145922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: Raffi was only going to the Mess for wine. A good, flinty red, she could taste it already on the back of her tongue, and maybe she hadn’t locked herself out of the main replicators. So. Looking for peace in a bottle, et cetera, et cet - eh - rahhh...And because no-one could be lonely in peace around here, of course there were voices...
Relationships: Agnes Jurati & Raffi Musiker
Series: On the Decks of La Sirena [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1634554
Comments: 15
Kudos: 54





	Prayer For Peace

**Author's Note:**

> // CW: Past suicide attempt, intrusive thoughts, past abuse,
> 
> // There are minor references to an earlier story I’d done, “Point of Contact”, which you don’t need to read. Just, in the universe of this set of stories, Raffi did manage a security interview with Agnes a little before Freecloud. That conversation revealed that she’d gone through a lot of them with Starfleet Security investigators over the years because she was a researcher in an extremely fraught field, and that some of those interviews went very hard on Agnes. Bring on the residual trauma, basically.

Raffi was only going to the Mess for wine. A good, flinty red, she could taste it already on the back of her tongue, and maybe she hadn’t locked herself out of the main replicators. So. Looking for peace in a bottle, et cetera, et cet - eh - rahhh... 

And because no-one could be lonely in peace around here, of course there were voices.

_“... if this is where you tell me you forgive me then you can shove it, you little shit.”_

Agnes was always kinda cute when she had a snap to her. It was Cris’s voice that answered her - and _not_ Cris - crisp and melodious.

_“This isn’t about forgiveness, Dr Jurati. Nor, in a fundamental way, is it about you at all.”_

_“Deac-”_

_“No.”_

_“Over-”_

_“Also, no.”_

Agnes’s voice dropped to somewhere between a growl and a purr, low and menacing. _“Do you honestly think,”_ she asked him, _“that I couldn’t fuck up your code, fuck_ _you_ _up, if I really, really wanted to? Last time was nothing.”_

The EMH’s voice grew jovial, mocking. _“Oh, well then, have at it!”_

Silence.

 _“If you promise to finish your soup,”_ he said, more gently, _“I can swap with one of the others. Or go to Silent Mode if that would help.”_

Agnes said very low, _“I can’t bear it when people watch me and I can’t watch them back.”_

_“I understand.”_

And that seemed like Raffi’s cue, to go or leave…

She stepped around the corner and saw three of them perched in a corner of the Mess, under the golden bell of an overhead light: Agnes sitting at the table with a steaming dish between her clenched hands and the EMH standing, hands in pockets, beside her. Emmet was already shivering into being at a side table, pre-slouched in his chair. _“Hola, Brujita.”_ The ETH waved a casual pair of fingers then nodded (politely for him) to Raffi in the entrance. _“Araña.”_

Agnes whirled. Raffi raised her hands sheepishly. “I’m just looking for booze. Some idiot locked the replicator in my quarters.”

“You are all of you disasters,” said the EMH.

“Eheh. Sorry to disappoint you, Emil.”

His shoulders moved in a sigh. Looking straight at her, he mouthed, _“No sharp implements,”_ and shifted his eyes to Agnes.

Well, shit.

She nodded infinitesimally, and the EMH gestured an abbreviated salute as he faded away. Emmet slouched further into his chair and fell asleep.

The little doctor stood abruptly and stalked to the Mess replicator, coming back with a long-necked bottle and two sturdy white cups. “You can be angry with me,” she declared. “I really don’t mind.”

“I’m not angry with you.”

Agnes raised one wispy eyebrow and set the bottle and cups on the table with a clack. As her arm moved, Raffi saw the flash running up Agnes’s inner wrist and forearm, the white-on-white of newly regenerated skin. They were at the stern end of the Mess, far away from the Bridge where Cris still piloted them rocketing to the point of the transwarp corridor. Raffi prayed he could not hear them down here. Her friend was still splinters, bound loosely together with a scrap of ribbon. Best not put this weight on him...

“I’m angry at Picard, for thinking his gut instinct overrules every objection.” Raffi continued, watching the little doctor pour. She held the bottle very carefully, in both hands. “It’s easier to be angry at _him_ than at myself, because suspicion is my profession and my avocation and you, girl, were throwing off signs.

Agnes set the bottle down and looked at her hands. “You thought I was afraid. And grieving.”

“You were both of those things. And I liked you, there’s that, too.”

Agnes picked up a flat-bottomed porcelain spoon, dipped up a little of the broth, fragrant with ginger and miso, then put it down hurriedly when her hand began to shake.

“Y’know,” Raffi said slowly, tracing her finger around the rim of her cup, “I trained for Intelligence during the Dominion War. And there was, there was some shit going down then.”

She watched her finger.

“One of the teachers, she told my class, ‘It’s not gonna be what you _do._ It’s living with yourself afterwards…’” Her finger circled. “We were just babies. Thought she was, I dunno, like a challenge? A standard?” She dropped her hand and left the cup unbidden. “She was granting us forgiveness.”

“There was a time.” Agnes stopped. “There was a time I had whole hours where I didn’t have to think about the Ad- the - Think about. It. You. Cris. Elnor.” A smile bloomed tremulous and unbidden on her mouth, then died. “Picard asked. Questions and I can’t stop. My bones are thundering. And. Bruce’s face. All the time.”

(The first thing Raffi knew about Bruce Maddox, the big thing really, was that he once took a serving, decorated Starfleet officer to court for the right to vivisect him. Or whatever word you used, for a synth. That there had been a murder, _that_ had tension still thrilling up and down her arms and spine. That it was Maddox who died? Raffi couldn’t work up much sorrow. She’d bet a lifetime of intoxicating-substance privileges Agnes didn’t need to hear that.)

“I am drowning in guilt.” More low, Agnes said, “Because I didn’t finish the job.” She looked up, manufacturing a brilliant smile. “So y’know. It’s quite alright to be angry with me.”

“Oh, honey-baby.” Raffi reached to stroke the little doctor’s face and Agnes leapt to her feet, throwing herself backwards and tangling herself in the chair.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I’m sorry…”

“Oh shit, those mindmelds.” Raffi stood up herself, very slowly. In the corner of her vision she could see Emmet, still slouched unmoving in his chair, but his eyes were open a bare slit, watching everything they did. “You told me all about them. I really am an idiot.”

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”

“Hrmmgph,” Raffi said, eloquently.

“You know,” said Agnes, talking too high and too fast, “I almost thought you had me back in that talk before Freecloud. You were asking about Oh, and I was scared, because what would I do next what could I do, and then you just kept looping around to, to old security interviews and it was just so weird, because what? Did you want to call them all up for a second opinion?”

“I was building a witness deposition for you,” Raffi said slowly, “because that shit’s illegal.”

Agnes stared at her.

“Mindmelds are a Class 4 procedure?” Raffi reminded her. “Need a warrant, or a truckload of paperwork after the fact, an’ there’s a 10-a-lifetime cap for non-psychic species. On account of the adverse psychological effects.”

The little doctor’s mouth worked silently.

“At least it _was_ illegal,” Raffi mused ruefully. “Starfleet is… it’s changed, Agnes.”

“Commodore Oh,” Agnes whispered.

“I wish. I wish I could blame it all on her.” Her colleagues. Friends, some of them had been and they couldn’t _all_ be Romulan infiltrators. And all of them making choices ‘for the good of the Federation’...”

“I was…” Agnes swallowed. “I was weak.”

“You were anything but.”

The doctor’s round, snub-nose face crumpled suddenly. 

A scrape of a foot from overhead. _“Uh, hey,”_ Cris’s voice filters down, thready and hesitant. _“Everything alright down there?”_

Agnes looked at Raffi, anguished. _“Not now,”_ she mouthed, backing under the shadow of the overhang.

Raffi looked up. With the light overhead, she could barely make out Cris’s form on the upper level, black on black. “Yeah,” she called, putting ease into her voice. “Just getting something to eat.”

A pause. Nobody moved.

Emmet opened his mouth, suddenly. _“I spilled some soup, Cris,”_ he said in Agnes’s voice. _“Sorry to startle you.”_

Raffi can hear the relief as her friend says, _“Right then. Back to the Helm for me.”_ A hesitation. _“Talk later, Agnes, yeah?”_

 _“You betcha,”_ Emmet said. He folded his arms around himself and fell asleep again, smirking this time. 

“What do you need?” Raffi asked, when the Captain had gone. “I can -” she glanced dubiously at the Mess replicator - “I can try to fix you up with something.”

“Um. Just talk. If that’s okay? I don’t want to -”

“It’s no trouble. My kid, when he was poorly, I always had to tell him a story while he was eating.”

Agnes looked up, startled. “You have a son?”

A sign falls out of her. “Yeah. I di- do. I named him Gabriel - it’s always angel-names, in my kin. Bright little spark, that one…”

And. Telling stories about Gabe was like holding a bouquet of splinters. But Agnes had picked up her porcelain spoon again, and her hands weren’t shaking. So. Raffaela clasped her hands in front of her, and kept talking.

**Author's Note:**

> // I had to think a bit about why I was including the “Point of Contact” stuff here because, canon has provided plenty of drama, yeah? Why shove my bit of fanon in? Except, Oh is a _villain._ It’s easy to accept villains as the source of all evil but, as Picard points out in “Broken Pieces”, Oh might have set the trap, but the Federation still walked into it, still made its own choices. That a governing body beset with fear and suspicion might start trampling the rights and integrity of its citizens… doesn’t seem out of the question to me. It seems to me that a strong theme of the show is confronting the errors we ourselves made, the sins that we commit while considering ourselves _Good._
> 
> And, there is a perniciousness about abuse from the people with authority over us, or whom we love and trust, that is so much harder to shake than harm from an enemy. It messes with your head, makes you doubt reality, your sense of self. If you’re breaking from what the world tells you is normal, what does that make you? In that circumstance, a reality check from an outsider is a lifeline.
> 
> Since this story is about Agnes processing trauma, in the end it seemed reasonable to keep it in.


End file.
